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OPINION

Why we can't look away

Alyssa Rosenberg
Published 4:01 p.m. ET April 3, 2017

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The collapse of the GOP's attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare has led to calls for bipartisanship, but House Speaker Paul Ryan says he doesn't want to work with Democrats. Matt Hoffman reports.

For Americans, the first couple, or even the second couple, for that matter, offers a lens through which we work out our own complex feelings about the institution of marriage and the role of women. In their first hundred days, President Trump and Vice President Pence have given us the ultimate contrast: a couple who don't live together and a couple who stay unusually - perhaps unnervingly - close.

The Trump and Pence marriages represent the jumble sale that is Republican values in 2017, from the thrice-married big-city philanderer with a habit of viewing women as ornaments to the conservative evangelical Christian who seems to simultaneously respect women and fear their sexual wiles. Still, there may be more to learn by comparing the Trump and Pence marriages not with each other but with those of the Democrats who preceded them.

During the unfolding drama of Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage, questioning Hillary Clinton's decision-making became a proxy for discussing the fears that came with a new era of opportunity for women. Why did someone so talented follow Bill Clinton to Arkansas in the first place? Why did she not merely stay with her husband when he cheated, but defend him? Speculation about Hillary Clinton's motives and choices was rarely entirely about her: It was a way to indulge our own morbid fancies about how we would behave in her place. If the Clintons' marriage was a fate to be avoided, the Obamas' marriage was the one to emulate - or to feel insecure about not matching. The Obamas went on dates. They teased each other. Essence shot a 2016 portrait of the couple so swooningly romantic, and so focused on the first lady's sex appeal, that it could have been an engagement photo. For some voters, the Obamas' example was a particularly satisfying rebuke to the ugly stereotype of dysfunctional black families. For others, as "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance suggested, the Obamas' success as spouses and parents cast an uncomfortable light on their constituents' struggles in those roles.

By this measure, Trump's own mixed marital track record might seem relatable or reassuring. Yet proximity to the Obamas, who represented a modern ideal of egalitarian marriage, highlights how unusually formal and old-fashioned Trump's marriage to Melania Trump seems.

Where Michelle Obama posts vacation photos of her sandy feet tangled with her husband's, Melania Trump constantly seems to be four or five steps behind a husband who doesn't bother to wait for her, much less to take her hand. Even before her decision to continue to live in New York, the Trumps occupied spheres so separate that they didn't even appear together to project an image of marital unity after a leaked tape revealed Trump making comments about grabbing women without their consent. Trump taped an apology; his wife was interviewed in their gilded apartment, talking about the challenges of parenting both her husband and her young son.

To some of Trump's supporters, this relationship is an ideal: a marriage defined by strict gender roles, where the woman's main obligations are to look gorgeous and stay home, and the man isn't just the head of his family, but his family exists to serve him. Other observers see Melania Trump as a victim blinking desperately for freedom. The people in these camps don't talk to each other, but they illustrate just how divided American ideas about marriage are.

By comparison with the Trumps, who sometimes seem to be testing how little time you can spend together and actually consider yourselves married, the Pences appear inseparable. The nature of their closeness sparked a firestormthislast week when a profile of Karen Pence in The Post called attention to remarks Mike Pence made in 2002 about how he doesn't dine alone with women not his wife, and won't attend functions where alcohol is served without her. (In the 2002 interview, Pence saidhe also often turns down invitations to drink or dine with men.)

Much of the resulting commentary focused on the way this so-called Billy Graham rule is based on a vision of men as weak lechers and women as temptresses and how following it could deny women critically important opportunities to do their jobs. Even granting that the couple's critics could be correct about the consequences of the Pences' rigid worldview, few seemed to consider it possible that the couple adheres to these rules out of a genuine dedication to their marriage.

And if Pence's policy might sideline other women (though he does not appear to have, as some observers suggested, a ban on meeting with women alone) the Pences have a conservative version of the two-for-the-price-of-one political marriage the Clintons first pitched on the campaign trail. Karen Pence may downplay her role in her husband's policymaking, though observers give her some credit for her husband's stances on gay rights issues as governor of Indiana. She's traveling with him on foreign trips, and has long had a hotline installed in his office that only she has the number to. Melania Trump's place may be in her gilded New York apartment; Karen Penceis in the thick of it with the vice president.

That isn't the only way the Pences function as a funhouse mirror of the Clintons. Like the Pences this week, Hillary Clinton's work to save her marriage has long been greeted with more disdain than empathy. Choose to stay in a marriage after repeated infidelity and you're a feminist sell-out. Take extreme-sounding steps to avoid becoming someone who strays and you're a right-wing, sexist loon.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: "No engagement (nor for that matter any marriage) should be a prison which keeps the engaged in and all but the fiance out." Couples such as the Clintons, Obamas, Trumps and Pences don't have much choice in the matter: The whole world is watching their marriages like unfolding soap operas. But as we follow each cliffhanger and dramatic revelation, we should be careful not to judge too harshly - or get too smug about having avoided these couples' mistakes or not feeling their weaknesses. Until we face the same challenges, we can't be sure we'd make better choices.